With plans already in place, about the long-pending cancellation of the furlough scheme, there were concerns that it could cause a massive economic collapse. The furlough scheme powered the UK economy since the beginning of the pandemic and was going strong for about seven months. It had the main aim of reducing the number of people laid off since companies were not meeting their set goals. While most of the companies in the UK were benefitting from the scheme, reducing the number of job cuts, there were reports that they were only receiving 80% of their pay since some companies could not pay the difference. Evaluating the scheme just showed that it was a value add, but it was not benefitting the economy, and many companies would not be able to get through the pandemic if it stopped.
In a recent statement, the chancellor in the UK said that the protracted battle against the virus meant the economy was undergoing a permanent adjustment but that it was “fundamentally wrong” to keep people in jobs that only existed due to the furlough introduced several months back.
To assist the economy, the beginning of August as when the Government decided they should start opening up the economy slowly and help smaller businesses. Their main idea was that people had been indoors for the larger part of the pandemic and they would be happy to come out and start visiting restaurants, pubs and so on. When they implemented these rules, it was a bad idea since there were chances of the virus having a relapse, but safety measures were in place to minimise the risks as much as possible.
Looking at the trends in other countries that followed the same roadmap, it was unfortunate but a second wave of the virus was quite likely, and a month and a half later, the UK found themselves in the middle of a second wave of the virus. While the Government did not want to send the country through another version of a national lockdown, since that would not help anyone, they were increasing rules and restrictions on people moving about in general. The rule-of-six was now in play, and people were only allowed to be in groups of less than six.
These rules and changes meant that people were staying indoors again. However, they were allowed to step outside but preferred not to since they did not want to take any chances. These changes also moved to the workforce, and most companies started pushing for remote working again, with people forced to meet deadlines while they were getting things done remotely.
Employers had not met a lot of their new teams in person and could not gauge whether they would be a good fit for the company. Another trend that started picking up in the UK was the background test which was so convenient to handle. The best test that they could work with, providing them with the most amount of information was the DBS check that employers for their employees or prospective employees. They could sit at a computer at their office and go through the DBS certificate to receive the information that they needed about criminal records and so on. Additionally, people who were applying for a job and knew that this would be the trend could work on updating their information through the DBS update service, and they would only make the changes after approving the information.
